THE HOBBIT MOVIES: COUNTDOWN TO 2012

December 14, 2012. Another Christmas season is coming, and with it, another star in the Lord of the Rings movie franchise-two movies, actually: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again are currently filming back-to-back in "The Home of Middle Earth", New Zealand.Seventeen months of waiting after a ten-year LOTR drought? Better be worth it!

The Hobbit should be required reading for sixth grade or first year high school. Or for the busy executive or fulltime mom who's willing to take on the lighter side of the behemoth that is the LOTR trilogy.It reads pretty much like a typical boyhood adventure, complete with hundreds of close calls, a treasure hunt, and a really nasty dragon. I actually read this after I finished The Return of the King, and my loyalty to and admiration for J.R.R. Tolkien has been cemented forever since then. The Two Towers made me proud to be an English major in U.P., having written one of my most grueling final papers (for modern British literature) ever. I started to appreciate the depths and breadths of the world's epics, and before long, no professor had to require me to wolf down The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Back then, eons before Cate Blanchett's (as Galadriel) beautiful narrative intro to The Fellowhip of the Ring, the trilogy plus The Hobbit created an organic tapestry for me--a world that's out of this world, yet deeply rooted in this world: the politics, religion, psychology, philosophy, science of it all, timeless and bountiful, were there in Tolkien's manifold imagination. As a flashlight reader, I kept these nuggets close to my heart, moving on to The Sandman series in the mid-90's, until Peter Jackson came along and brazenly shot the three films. The anticipation nearly killed me. The antipathy towards Liv Tyler (sigh, as Arwen) grew and grew, and so did my movie memorabilia. Those were crazy years indeed.

But teaching the novels in high school wasn't a crazy idea at all. Thanks to the movies, mass market paperbacks were all over the bookstores, and my third and fourth year high school students then were reading  The Two Towers and The Return of the King, and writing really splendid essays on them. The entries on my students' thematic worksheets were such a joy to read, and our discussions were alternately hilarious and thought-provoking. I took care to focus on chapters that were not featured in the movies, like The Houses of Healing, where Eowyn and Farmir find each other and nurse each other's broken hearts, and The Scouring of the Shire, where the four hobbits--sans the mighty Elves and Men--defeat the evil forces that have taken root in their homeland The Shire. My students were telling me how proud they were to be annotating the movies to their friends and family, knowing what they knew beyond the movies. They have also come to realize that most everything in pop culture (read: Harry Potter) borrows from  the quest archetype and the heroic tradition. Every other adventure tale after the 50's pretty much echoes The Lord of the Rings, for better or for worse.

The Hobbit films should be promising. Some of the old gang will be reprising their roles (Orlando Bloom, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, among others), but it is the new crop of actors that interests me: Thorin Oakenshield, that brave, beloved dwarf leader will be played by Gerard Butlerish Richard Armitage (see pic on the right, also see the Captain America movie, where I think he plays a Nazi)), and Thranduil, Legolas' father will be played by Lee Pace of Pushing Daisies fame (he will also be in the Breaking Dawn film as roguish vampire Garrett). Smaug the CGI dragon will be voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, the suave villain from Atonement. Lost's Evangeline Lilly is an elf here, and I hope she doesn't glide and whisper like Liv Tyler. What should be interesting to all is Bilbo's epic first encounter with Gollum, and the riddles that led to the ring ending up in Bilbo's pocket.Plus, the merry band of dwarfs that came knocking on Bilbo Baggins' door are featured in the early poster versions. These little guys are poised to make a fashion statement!


"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Tolkien first wrote that line in the middle of checking his students' test papers. Me? In the middle of my administrative paperwork, I'll be blogging about this ongoing journey. That's a promise.

LOTR around the net:

http://www.theonering.net/
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/tolkien.html
http://www.tolkien-online.com/
http://www.lord-of-the-rings.org/index.html
http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/The_Return_of_the_King_(novel)
http://www.tolkiensociety.org/

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BOARD GAME-OLOGY

Blogger' Note: This is a repost of the January 2010 entry "Beat You At The Board Games" from my Lexaprone blog. I thought it would be cool for schools to encourage board game-time, hopefully to divert students' minds from cybergames, which, studies show, is one of the causes of poor academic performance among school-age boys. Now that's an idea for the next blog entry...





                                                                                                                  photo by Millette Espiritu




Call me the ungeek, but I never learned how to play chess. I can tell a king from a queen, and a rook from a knight, and that's about it. My curiosity about the game was piqued late last year when I finished reading Katherine Neville's The Eight, that pre-Dan Brown novel about religious and political intrigues across Western civilization history centered on the game of chess, so I fiddled with a lame computer chess version. Again, that's about it.

Even without chess, my shady 70's-80's childhood was replete with all kinds of board games. Almost every Christmas or my birthday, without fail, I would receive a board game as a gift, or inherit a second-hand set from my older cousins. Snakes and  Ladders, Backgammon, Monopoly.Pictionary. Mastermind. I've had sets that came and went. Because I was never a solitary child, I lived to play these games with family and friends. It's four players, or nothing! Here are some of the board games that have molded me into what I am now: bored of games (Get it? Get it?):


            (Prof. Plum, a murder suspect in the game Cluedo; photo from www.cluedofan.com)

1. Cluedo 
I totally channeled Nancy Drew with Cluedo. I even followed a British TV series on cable with totally different characters, but with essentially the same premise: find the killer, the weapon and the crime scene, you win. Anyone who's played it must agree with me: the game was so cool because of the "suspects"-Professor Plum, Mr. Green, Miss Scarlett, Mrs. Peacock, Mrs. White, and Colonel Mustard; the "weapons"-candlestick, lead pipe, knife, revolver, rope; and the "crime scene"-conservatory, kitchen, lounge, hall, etc. The objective is to be the first to make an accusation involving the three elements listed above, and for that accusation to be correct, as proven by the three cards inserted into a "confidential envelope" before the game starts. Before a player can make a logical accusation, though, he must first express "suspicion" using this linguistic pattern: "I suspect that (suspect's name, e.g. Col. Mustard) killed (the victim--it's always the same victim) in the (crime scene, e.g. conservatory), with a (weapon, e.g. knife). The other players will hint at whether that player is right or not, based on the cards they hold in their cards (e.g. another player must say "No" if he is holding one, two or all the cards mentioned by the player expressing suspicion). So basically, the game is all about deduction, process of elimination, and intelligent guessing. And now that I am writing about this, I'm itching to do some sleuthing in the house, for my precious Cluedo has been missing since I finished college...

2. Scrabble 
I need not describe how this ultimate word game is played. A bonafide worldwide sensation then and now, complete with a multilingual website and downloadable PC game version, this is the board game that slays all board games. I've had about four sets in my lifetime, from the bulky wooden set to the travel version, and all of them have helped while away those lazy afternoons. The most exciting part of the game for me is angling for the triple word block, and nearly wringing the neck of my opponent when he beats me to the coveted spot.

There's a Scrabble-like game called Upwords, which should be more challenging because you can stack up the tiles to form new words. My only problem with it is the monotonous color of the plastic board, so unlike the patterned colors of the Scrabble board. The scoring system is also quite ho-hum, with only one point given per letter per tile (except the "Q" which automatically comes with a "u"). The tiles are also difficult to grasp for some reason. If the manufacturer could only get these imperfections out of the way, it'll be the last word in board games.



3. Trivial Pursuit
My friend Rahnee brought this to one of our college sleepovers, and I swear we didn't sleep. As the name of the game implies, it's all about knowing popular culture-Western pop culture, that is. It means that you have to be familiar with Beatles songs, with 80's cop shows, with literary figures, world geography, and stuff you'll never learn in school, kinda like the opposite of "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader". 

4. Pictionary
First you have to pray that you get a teammate who can draw decent stick figures. The rest is great fun which includes laying the blame on the designated artist even if he's already done a Picasso. The objective is for your team to get to the finish line by correctly guessing a teammates drawing based on the color-coded topics printed on the card. For the category "All Play", even the opposing team can guess what's being drawn, and mayhem ensues when everyone starts screaming their answers.

5. Twilight The Game
I just acquired this one from Jeje, a fellow Twilighter. I haven't even unsealed the box! But looking at the directions on the back of the box, I'd say it's a straightforward race to the finish, with the player knowing more about Twilight having the edge. One day soon I'll unseal the box and force someone to play with me; then I have something more helpful to say about it.
After all, the game might suck, but who cares? IT'S TWILIGHT!!!

photo by Millette Espiritu

[3 hours later]

So I couldn't wait. I opened the game box and spent an hour-and-a-half learning the rules, which to my dismay was a thousand times more complex than Scrabble. The race to the finish is actually the race to collect 8 scene cards before anyone else. To do that, you roll the dice, move your Cullen gamepiece around the board, land on a square and do what it says, which is mostly "pick one card." That's where the fun starts. So far I know that challenge cards have red and white daggers, one of which will ask the player questions about the movie (that threw me coz I prefer the questions to be about the book. Oh well.). If the player gives the correct answer, he has a chance to collect a scene card (He needs 8), but he is forced to discard one that he already has. To get to scene 7 and 8 (the prom scene no less), the player needs to get all 6 scene cards first. 

I have a few complaints with the material used for the game pieces. Cardboard Cullens (all gamepieces are Cullen crests) aren't going to live an immortal life. The text on the cards are also too small for astigmatics like me, though Alice Cullen wouldn't have a problem with that. The box itself is made of soft cardboard--not immortal either. It looks like a trial version, actually, as though Cardinal, the manufacturer, was still testing the product. I suggest that they make the box sturdier and the gamepieces more durable, since Twilight fans tend to be rabid ( I almost freaked out when I saw the James cards!).


Blogger's Edit 11 April 2011:
Have I used board games in class? You betcha. I conceptualized two that I'm quite proud of. The first was actually a simple back-forward-type featuring ALL the students in my advisory section. I made up wacky stuff about them, put their caricatures in boxes, and photocopied them so everyone has copies. I believe it was my schoolyear-end gift to the junior class of 1997. 


The other was a quest-type of game for my Oddyssey class. I printed clues on clue cards which led to questions on question cards that teams need to answer correctly to earn points. The Q-cards were hidden in strategic places around campus, or with school personnel who asked for passwords before teams can receive their cards. I started doing  this back in 1997, and every few years I'd muster the strength (coz it ain't no joke creating the game!) to conduct what I call The Quest. I am darn sure that I was years ahead of Amazing Race!